@BESW I clicked on all the comics I could see on the tumblr page. They were probably out of order and I don't know if I saw all of them and each comic opened a new tab and required clicking 3 times to actually get to see the comic properly. I don't think that is the intended way of doing it.
@trogdor Gumshoe One-2-One is a version of Gumshoe (the Bubblegumshoe engine) specifically for twosies. But it's only been released so far as the engine for a Mythos game.
Found himself to suddenly planning a group for DSA... Because somebody called "you live in that town, right? I met some people on a con and they live in your town and desperately need a capeable GM"
If the group comes together as they asked me, I'll have two of either gender, one of which is a couple. Anyone sees some trouble with that config? I don't know either of the players...
Again, only if they let it. I've played with an on-again, off-again couple and they'd just never have both of them show up on the same night if they were in off-again mode.
I've seen a romance/gender thing be a really big issue in a group twice. Once was a guy who didn't know how to take "no" for an answer, and the other was a couple that refused to game together because they'd been convinced it would doom any group they joined... until I convinced them to join mine.
@BESW If that is the couple I have met, I have had an absolute pleasure being able to play with them the nights either or both of them have been there.
@Trish In what way though? I've seen that couple BESW is talking about play roles where their characters had significant connections (one was the guardian and rock of the other in one game) and that was fine & fun.
Also, getting an answer below -3 requires real strong aversion to the stated. It's already hidden at that point and you're losing rep for voting it down further.
Same set of players where I had to lay down the "no drinking, not even if it's in your coffee and I know you can handle it because he can't handle it and it's mean to drink when he wants to but can't" side rule.
(Which later expanded to adding "I don't care if it's your birthday" to the "No shrooms" clause.)
I play in a WoD-crossover group, where the GM has his wife in the group too. The game runs since... ages? Like a decade or more (I joined like... 3 to 5 years ago). However, she rarely really plays her role. We tried to help her to find her character as a ceilician for the past year(s), she didn't find it. Now she changed character... I don't see her finding her sweetspot there either. But then again, I see that GM giving too much leeway anyway.
@BESW oh no, i remember you mentioning that to me xD
Someone in BESW's gaming group binge-watched The Wire once, and the binge altered his discourse enough he brought comparable ... colourful street language to the table. I'd probably be at risk of doing that as well if I binge-watched it.
[grin] I'm on record that I started RPGs in large part to use them as a structure for making conscious decisions about our social space.
I count myself lucky that the most dramatic group I was ever part of, self-destructed shortly after I joined. Most of my games have been relatively pleasant even at their worst, compared to the stories I've heard.
I think I dodged a bullet by declining the invitation to the Star Wars d20 game where everyone was playing Sith and tricked-out smugglers' droids, except the one Jedi.
(The GM of that game makes a brief cameo in the above linked conversation, as the player whose PC took a leak on the mayor's door.)
@Trish Hm. There's different kinds of players, some of whom enjoy sitting back and watching, some of whom find the whole ...... method acting component of roleplaying more challenging than others, which is OK. I recall D&D 4e contained a breakdown of the types of fun players can have in its DMG. I wonder if something like that would be relevant in helping you find where she is having her fun if not in that way.
So she may be looking to explore herself in that game's context rather than an externalised character, or a character that largely represents herself (whether she recognises it or not)?
@BESW oh, I didn't realize that they had thought that would be a huge issue
@BESW lol
@BESW yeah, when my brother told me about his main group he had other than ours, I half expected for a while to see such things in our group popping up for no reason
@doppelgreener yet she makes a character that is so unlike to her. Like, she knows she can't sing... her char is a musical actress. Not my problem actually...
@doppelgreener I am pretty sure on many occasions I have slipped a little more of my own personality into a character at times than was originally intended myself
[grin] I created Jesse largely because I know my tendency is to talk my way out of things whether it's in my character or not, so I made a PC who had an even more attractive option: shooting time at things.
nope (and honestly, that rule is dumb), but you said she might try to explore herself and I don't see her doing that. I think she just joined to cling to the GM and don't let him out of the eye.
now, I should probably refresh my DSA knowledge... last read in the rule books... uhm... 5 or more years ago?!
@trogdor The quality of the performance is determined by die roll, the actual singing is just added entertainment. Just take some song you happen to think of at the time and make up lyrics.
Although if someone seriously hates doing that I'd just drop it. No point doing it if it doesn't add entertainment.
I still work with some of them periodically. Generally speaking it's one of those things where the group is toxic but the individuals are fine once you separate them.
@trogdor I am sure that's the case for me too. Nowadays I'm self-aware my characters always have at least one piece of myself I want to explore embedded in them, but I'm sure I put a lot more than even that into them.
I'm mostly fiddling with houserules for my DnD party at the moment.
The first "season" of their adventures is going to end with them being granted nominal leadership of the adventuring society, I'm going to figure some rules for them on how to use this newly acquired resource.
Without shifting the focus of the game away from adventuring, of course.
Not really in charge, they've got people to do the actual hands-on management. It's meant to be something cool that happens in the background, not a liability.
There's little in video games I hate more than what happens in eg. Assassin's Creed III - I'm just jumping around, enjoying a little adventure, and then suddenly the game says "No, you have to go here now. Your property is under attack". I want to avoid that experience in RPGs as well :)
@kviiri After Adventures is a game set in a low-fantasy world loosely based on medieval way of life. It's a game about adventurers trying to fit into the rest of the society once the adventure is over. It can range from light-hearted to very serious and has the player characters use their hard-earned treasure and (debatable) fame to make their lifelong dreams come true. They are pitted against obstacles such as a rigid class-based society, hostile laws and taxes, unsupportive religion and authorities dead-set on making them a dreaded example of what happens if you dare to reach above your station. Specifically, even though PCs may come back to adventuring briefly to improve their reputation and/or financial status, the game is definitely focusing on everything that's not adventuring.
The reason I asked about Apocalypse World is that I'm considering using some bits of Hardholder, Hocus etc as an inspiration. They're not quite what I want, though, because their point is to provide difficulties for the player along with the benefits, while I don't want the shift the focus away from adventuring in the slightest.
I have another idea, something I'm eagerly waiting to see in PC -RPGs like Dragon Age. It's that often your main character has a posse of companions, a small number of whom you can take with you on missions. Meanwhile, the rest sits idly and plays ping pong while you're out. The idea is to have these characters go on side missions, success of which depends on how they like you and each other, their equipment etc.
I actually think something like Mother Base for Snake in MGS: Peace Walker and Phantom Pain would be better for my "management" part. Except no upgrades, just support.
@eimyr If you like stealth/action games like Splinter Cell, don't even consider skipping the newest installment (Phantom Pain). Phantom Pain is a masterpiece of the genre, with an all-but-perfect core loop.
@eimyr I remember some games that do that. I forgot which ones exactly, but it was not very fun because it is essentially rolling a die to decide if you get some loot, nothing or the character dies with no agency.
@eimyr The rest of the MGS series is varying in terms of gameplay, mostly worth it for the cool characters and above-average plot (at least for it's time).
@nwp in DA:Inquisition and ME:Andromeda you could have a team that does missions for you while you're adventuring and it was boring. I thought including characters you care about in the process (with plot armour and at most some narrative drama as penalties for rolling badly) is going to make it more interesting
This War of Mine did it on purpose to portray how terrible war is.
@kviiri Thanks for the recommendation, but I'm not convinced. I don't own a console, so that's that, but I think a lot of the appeal is from nostalgia towards childhood faves.
I have some friends who say AC has gotten better with past instances, but jeez, Ubisoft. No more.
Enough disappointments, broken launches and all that for one life.
AC is a series that should work for me in many ways. I'm a history geek, I love conspiracies and power plays, and I love stealth games. But somehow they blew it :<
I have AC4, and I enjoyed the pirating a bit, but then there was the Abstergo rubbish and stupid cult templar-assassin plotline with childish fight for "freedahm". Ew.
it's just so oversimplified, dumbed down and bland it loses all the appeal. "Let's make a game about assassins in a historical setting!" is such a great idea, how on Earth did they feel the need to add present day conspiracy, quack genetic memories and end-of-story morals for 5-year-olds?
Hmm, I think it sort of works in the first game, in a weird round-about way. The first game is pretty rubbish in many other ways, but their inclusion of such an overall weird story element is solid proof that the game was intended to be art, not cash-grab :)
Whether it's good art, is a different question. But I always try to give worth to people's motives, not just outcomes.
@eimyr Well that depends on the definition of cash-grab. Can't really blame the people for making the game or the people marketing it for trying to pull a profit.
But they didn't go at it the easy way but tried to be innovative and do something more novel, which is admirable in my opinion even if the result is a pretty mediocre game.
Anyway, back to RPGs from dissing video games we dislike :) I need ways for the players to receive benefits from the society they lord over
The obvious one is research, and it's also game-mechanically safe. They can send a message to the society requesting information about trolls, dragons, or whatever, and the top heads of the organization will produce a timely response with the most accurate information.
It represents a business as a set of resource pools that employees can draw from to improve their rolls.
In InSpectres, you have a Library Card, a Gym Card, and a Credit Card, which each accumulate resources based on jobs completed. And you can spend from those Cards to improve rolls associated with the appropriate theme.
I can see some places where it's very obviously an Early Days narrative game, but the basic concept seems useful for transplanting so long as you adapt it to its new environment.
I much preferred the shared Mission Pool in Night Witches, which essentially does the same, but isn't sequestered into categories and is so much more precious
spending 4 from Credit Card on a roll was much less fun than spending 1 from mission pool, especially that the second one, if unnecessary, was deeply felt
@Secespitus Yeah, buying and selling magical gear would be a good option. And perhaps they'd even grant freebie common magical items like health potions and so after every quest.
@Secespitus Good ideas. The latter one won't really kick in because the PCs will be in a hostile empire trying to topple it (while their organization is outside the borders)
This is the campaign that I was describing a few days back: there's a warlock of Asmodeus who has corrupted a normal petty King with imperial ambitions, and granted him five lieutenants (a giant, a dao, an elder brain, a red dragon and a devil disguised as a good cleric) to help him rule the conquered land in various forms of tyranny. The players must kill the five lieutenants in whatever order they desire and then storm the capital.
@schroedingersKat Nominally, but the focus of the campaign ought to stay in adventuring. They have underlings to keep up the organization's usual duties.
I want to give them the experience of having an entire organization's resources working for them without turning the game into Command and Conquer.
I think that support through spies (Inkeeper, Thieves, Butlers, ...) would be the most valuable support in that situation. Getting into territory like a castle and having people who might help you hide after an assassination sounds incredibly useful.
With occasional "The organization sent you these 5 health potions and a scroll of invisibility, together with this letter that describes you as a noble in this country"
then perhaps you could prepare some "missions" that'd arise during the campaign, to which players could assign organization's teams? few days later you'd roll to check whether they finish or botch the job
I also dislike players not knowing the specifics of various enemies well enough to make informed decisions, having spies and such would give a good in-universe reason for the players to be aware at all times.
@schroedingersKat That's a bit disconnected for my taste, but being able to order the society to pull of things like stirring trouble in a town the players are about to visit sounds like a good idea.
I can of course make it take away all the boring stuff of the game. Food and shelter anywhere, free carriage rides or teleports and all that.
@kviiri You can make that boring stuff interesting: is the food good or is it poisoned because the other person is a counterspy? Is the carriage ride safe or will we get ambushed because our friends were too careless? Giving them the feeling they are safe wherever they go might make things too dull. At least from time to time I would try to stir things up a little.
@kviiri Doesn't have to be an 'every meal' thing, but in certain circumstances it may be the right thing to do - and you can provide enough hints leading up to that type of event.
Overhearing a heated discussion between the Innkeeper and some dubious people in black clothes on the outside, right before he serves your meal might justify an Investigation check.
Or have someone mix fake Sand of Invisibility or however that one was called into their regularly provided provisions. Better double check everything you get from the guy who arranges the meetings that regularly result in death
The background for the empire thing is that there used to be a mighty and beloved wizard emperor, Magnus, who basically founded the empire out of nothing and brought prosperity to everyone. When his wife died, Magnus went into self-imposed exile, concluding his thousand-year reign an leading the empire to fall. Basically, his memory is so noble that no one wants to usurp it - until the evil Warlock corrupts the king.
As an extra detail, Magnus is still alive, but stays all the time in his wife's hidden tomb, mourning her death. Also, he won't return to save the world with his magic tricks, because he never was powerful in the first place - it was actually his wife who was the magical superstar.
The society ruled by the players is actually founded by Magnus to safeguard the realm in his absence.
Hmmmm, Elite mooks are can kill one PC in 6 mook-rounds, but the veteran PC will take 15.5 mook-rounds. The new 3 PCs will all likely take around 6 mook-rounds too.
Can't decide if this is good, or really too strong for mooks.
@Erik a mook-round is the number of mooks*rounds it takes to kill a certain PC. 8 mook-rounds means that it takes 1 mook 8 rounds, or 8 mooks 1 round, on average, to kill said PC.
@kviiri @kviiri subordinates. As in, every couple of sessions you break from "main" characters to play out a one-shot that Player A helped design and staff; then one by player B.... Something like "what're your parts of the organization doing?" A: "my squad's going to go try to infiltrate Castle Boogedeboo and steal away the Artifact of Doom/" Three weeks later, you-all play out that scenario and see how A's squad did. Lather, rinse, repeat.
(oh, actually, Schrodinger's Cat said something like that two lines later....)
@nitsua60 Actually, I've kinda always wanted to get enough of a "playgroup" together to have multiple parties going at the same time, such that 2 or 3 DMs could be running games simultaneously. Sort of like Adventure League but with better continuity management.
@Adam What I mean is: some groups wouldn't have any care for something that "slows" the main storyline, so the idea of regularly taking a session "off" to follow some low-level characters around is just too much B-roll for them.
It sorta depends if there's an expectation that this story/campaign will last around a year, or if it's an open-ended "fine if it goes five years" thing.
@godskook Yesssss =D
I'm sowing seeds for that with one of my RL groups now.
In another RL group we've got lots of people who are happy to GM, but we've just been rotating GMs for all the AL seasons. So no cross-table continuity, even when we-all are playing multiple games together. (For instance, right now the same table is playing OotA with one GM, Yawning Portal with another, and in a few months I'll take over and run ToA. But there's no contact among all of those.)
The design setup I got right now seems like it'd work perfectly for this:
Adventures that last ~3-5 sessions Easily excusable inter-party-swapping ala working for the same guild *MASSIVELY* powerful base of operations, such as to enable adventures far afield, preventing too much overlap, even with "cool" plots.
@Erik actually, I might as well throw this out there. This is me prepping for further RHoD sessions, so the number of units will ~roughly~ match the book, although I've been going through and upgrading them.
Playing some other folks who aren't directly related to the main adventure can be really cool, if it matters to the overall story
I once had a campaign where my players decided to team up and work for the villains for a short while. I ran a session where the players got to RP the villains during a council meeting where they were going to decide what to do with the newly recruited adventurers after the current task was completed and they weren't useful anymore. They decided that their normal characters should all be put to death. It was awesome :)
They managed to escape in the end, but it really shaped quite a large segment of the campaign and made the final confrontation all the more interesting :P
@godskook Non-DnD-days don't count as days. It's the same as with the weekend. There's the weekend and the time in between weekends about which you don't talk.
So, the Illithid colony wants to encourage its underlings to sin without mind control to preserve good relations with Asmodeus. How would they go on about this?
@Erik I know that ~technically~, you can shove any object you want into any field you want, but I'm starting this headache with all ints, and the angularJS is using === instead of ==, but for some odd reason, something, somewhere, is converting only part of my stuff to strings.
The Giant is an extreme militarist like Nazi Germany or Sparta. Anything not for the legion is repurposed and reprogrammed until it is war-worthy. The Dragon is a tribute-collecting warlord like the Huns - it doesn't concern itself with governing, only threats and fulfilling them. And so forth. The Mind Flayers were originally going to represent government by assassination/secret police.
Maybe their sin should arise from paranoia. The fear that someone will hear your thoughts...
What kind of sin are you imagining the populace is engaging in? For example, there are parallels to draw with the Third Reich if you consider the sin to just be genocide, or the result of rampant nationalism. If the sin is pure debauchery, then we'll have to choose a different path.
Considering the nature of mind flayers is typically that they view themselves as superior to pretty much everything, making them extraplanar Nazis isn't exactly far fetched, though it may not match what you had in mind.
The point being, Asmodeus claims the souls of those who succumb to evil by tyranny's influence, so he constructs this evil regime to foster evil thoughts.
@Adam Depends on the fief they're in. In the Giant's domain, their sin will be wrath and supremacy, lack of compassion towards the weak. In the dragon's realm, they'll be coerced into pushing each other in the harm's way to avoid tribute. In the Dao's realm, the poor will be driven into jealousy for each other's meager possessions while the richest few gorge themselves with fine food and drink.
@Erik Sort of, yeah. The reason why I didn't really want to take Illithids is that they sort of have their own agenda, too, and that's not very well-aligned with Asmo's ends.
@kviiri having their own doesn't mean that Asmo isn't willing to utilize for his own purpose. There may be an overlap and Asmo may think (probably wrongly) that he can control them. Gives another potential plot hook.
Maybe go with Riddick's "Keep what you kill" theme. Society is structured into towns, governed by majors lead by governors who answer to the lord etc. You gain a rank by making the previous position holder resign. Can be done through anything from threads to murder.
@Adam context: @kviiri has only just selected Mind Flayers for a realm YESTERDAY, and is still hashing it out, and likely still is on the fence about using Flayers at all.
@NautArch It's not just non-aligned, it's borderline contradictory. Mind Flayers' whole shtick is mind-controlling things, but sins under mind control don't count. That's a significant conflict of interest.
They do other alien experiments too, so I could work with that. Asmo gives them free reign to steal people to pry their brains, Mind Flayers get at least something done.
@kviiri As I pointed out yesterday, that's not their whole shtick. They don't have the PP for that. They very explicitly use empires of slaves. See: The Gith(-yanki and -zerai)
"To them, the multiverse would be a better place were they to hold rule over it, and any that disagree are only confused about the natural way of things, blind to the role of the illithid as the ultimate apex predator; even others of their kind that question this truth are quickly "corrected" in their ways. And though they may not hold position above all yet, they know it to be inevitable that they will, for it is simply what must be."
@kviiri think Goa'uld from Stargate SG-1, and their loyal Jaffa.
Hm, how about this: The Illithids have only agreed to slay those who are already wicked in their ways. The rest of the populace, they torment with experiments to see how unjust mankind can be. One is well-fed and kept in hedonistic haze as long as they tolerate another person starving near them. Those who don't accept lose privileges they've grown addicted to.
Eventually, the Mind Flayers have created an entire factory state churning out people who would gladly torture others for a drop of wine, and they are feasted upon by the flayers, who keep the minds while Asmo gets the souls.
